Congressman Ron Paul was a victim of what later transpired to be a deliberate policy on behalf of CBS News to restrict the air time of certain candidates during last night’s Republican debate, after he was afforded just 90 seconds of speaking time during the course of the event in South Carolina last night.

Paul’s campaign reacted furiously to the Texan being limited to 90 seconds in what was a 90 minute-long debate, with Campaign Manager John Tate blasting out an email entitled “What a Joke,” in which he stated, “It literally made me sick watching the mainstream media once again silence the one sane voice in this election. The one dissenter to a decade of unchecked war. The one candidate who stands for true defense and actual constitutional government. Ron Paul was silenced, in perhaps the most important debate of the cycle.”

A scientific study undertaken by the University of Minnesota last month confirmed that Ron Paul had been given the least speaking time out of all the Republican candidates during the debates, even less than the likes of John Huntsman and Rick Santorum, who have routinely been beaten by Paul in national polls.

As Marc Fortier points out, an email inadvertently sent to Michelle Bachmann’s campaign clearly indicates that certain candidates were given less air time as a result of a deliberate CBS policy.

When a CBS staffer referenced how Bachmann’s campaign had made representatives available for an after-debate webshow, CBS News political analyst John Dickerson responded by saying, “Okay let’s keep it loose though since she’s not going to get many questions and she’s nearly off the charts in the hopes that we can get someone else.”

Dickerson’s admission that CBS had deliberately ensured Bachmann was “not going to get many questions” during the debate indicated “a planned effort to limit questions to Michele Bachmann at tonight’s CBS/National Journal Debate,” the Bachmann campaign said in a statement.

Obviously, that policy of limiting air time to certain candidates was also applied to Congressman Ron Paul, despite the fact that he has consistently won straw polls and proven himself as a top tier candidate in national polls.

As we have documented, despite his popularity the establishment media has deliberately downplayed and sidelined Paul’s campaign.

After Ron Paul finished a close second to Bachmann in the highly regarded Ames straw poll, and was subsequently blacklisted by the corporate press, Politico's Roger Simon said the reason for him being ignored was that "the media doesn't believe he has a hoot in hells chance of winning the Iowa caucuses, the Republican nomination or winning the presidency, so we're gonna ignore him."

"We are in the business of kicking candidates out of the race,” CNN host Howard Kurtz responded.